Shah's last palace now a museum in Iran

The shah of Iran’s last refuge before fleeing his country in
1979 was a palatial estate nestled against the Alborz Mountains — a place no
Iranian ever dreamed of visiting.

Today, it costs them around $1.

The Niavaran Palace, a complex of mansions on a 27-acre
(11-hectare) plot, now welcomes the public to marvel at the luxuries the shah
enjoyed as Iran’s monarch for nearly four decades.

As Iran reflects on Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s departure from
the country 40 years ago on Wednesday, the palace has taken on even more
meaning for those visiting and working there.

“We did what we did consciously. We were following an
ideology,” said Jamal Shahosseini, who as a young revolutionary raided the palace
with other demonstrators.

“When you do something consciously and with an ideology, you
go until the end despite pressures,” he said.

The compound dates back to Iran’s Qajar dynasty in the
1800s, when the monarchy chose to build a summer palace on a mountainside. As
Tehran grew during its oil boom years of the 1960s, the shah’s Marmar Palace
near the city’s vast Grand Bazaar became increasingly untenable for the monarch
to live in as political tensions against his rule grew. That included a failed
1965 assassination attempt by a member of his guard who was close to religious
dissidents.

Instead, the royal family found refuge at the Niavaran
Palace. The shah’s third wife, Queen Farah, had been an architecture student.
She spent millions of dollars renovating the compound’s palaces. A wing of one
palace became a private art gallery of pieces she purchased known as the Window
to the World.

The shah would walk the grounds or speed along its roads in
one of his many sports cars. A pilot, he’d fly helicopters in and out as well,
staying off the streets as tensions rose.

All that spending, and long circulating rumors of
embezzlement surrounding the Pahlavi dynasty, helped fuel anger against the
monarchy. From abroad, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom the shah had forced
into exile early on, called for a revolution.

As 1979 came, the pressure became unbearable for the shah,
who at the time was secretly battling the cancer that would ultimately kill him
in exile.

On Jan. 16, 1979, the shah left the palace for the last time
by helicopter, looking out over a Tehran he never would see again.

On Feb. 11, 1979, the day the revolution took hold, protesters
pushed past the remaining Imperial Guards at the compound. Among them was
Shahosseini, now a 63-year-old guard at the museum. He remembers scrawling
graffiti over the walls, ranging from “Viva Khomeini” to “Death to the Shah.”

“It was controlled by the Imperial Guards when we arrived.
We gave them plain clothes while they were shivering with fear,” he told The
Associated Press. “They thought we were Communists trying to capture the
palace. We told them that we were not Communists but were Khomeini’s supporters
from the Niavaran neighborhood. Then we conquered the palace.”

Today, visitors to the complex can walk the halls of the
shah’s former residence and see the clothes and items they left behind. In one
room, the shah’s dress uniform stands on a headless mannequin, complete with a
ceremonial sword sheath. Two paintings also still remain showing the shah and
his queen.

Another building in the complex includes some of the shah’s
many luxury automobiles, including three Rolls-Royce and five Mercedes-Benz
automobiles, six motorcycles and a snowmobile. Other museums in Iran have more.

For Fardin Asgari, a 28-year-old visitor born long after the
revolution and Iran’s bloody eight-year war with Iraq, the takeaway from the
French-style furniture and luxury surroundings was that “the people viewed the
shah as a dictator.”

“They wanted to have a popular and elected government, not a
dictatorship,” he said.

Maintenance staff at the complex try to keep the complex as
it was when the shah left, including leaving Prince Alireza’s study room
complete with its electric piano, stuffed kangaroo and pictures of naval
warships taped to the walls. It can feel like a time capsule to another era, a
feel that some get even today as Iran faces new tensions with the United States
after President Donald Trump pulled America from the Iranian nuclear deal.

“Today’s pressures are for depriving us of our
independence,” Shahosseini said. “We did not have any independence under the
shah’s reign.”